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JohnQPulp

3 karma · joined February 15, 2026

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JohnQPulp··on You can now generate files in Gemini
One pain point I had with Gemini for a while was for a use case where I needed it to output exact specific ASCII-formatting back out, such as asterisks around words meant to be italicized, for copying out. But Gemini kept auto-formatting those words as italics in its chat display, removing the asterisks (and other formattings) in the process.

Eventually I realized the "fix" was to ask it to begin its response with:

```text

...Which consistently got it to output in a plain text block. It worked, but was frustrating to have to figure out.

Hopefully this file generation stuff will help reduce that pain point.

JohnQPulp··on $1,605: average annual ad value of a U.S. Google user
It's interesting/non-intuitive to me that parents would be worth less than non-parents. I wonder: is that because they actually tend to spend less, or is it because more of the clicks are accidental ones, from when the kids get handed the phone?

But I guess that would apply more to display ads than to search ones, so I'm not sure. Confusing.